The Exorcist Files - Discovering Our Gifts Of The Spirit

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Father Martins discusses the gifts of the spirit and how to discern our own. A special thank you to The Lion. Check out their incredible and free newsHonor God with Every Step- Grab a pair of UNITUS SHOESSubscribe to the Vault and get the dramatic case files a day early. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, a tantalizing tour of the transient terrain. Okay, that was a stretch. Today, we bring you one of our last bonus episodes before the finale and final episodes of season two. That's right, dramatic episodes are coming back soon. Today, we dive into spiritual gifts. Now, if you have the gift of prophecy, you probably already know what this episode's about, so you can just fast forward. We want to thank The Lion for sponsoring this show.

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as a thank you. All you have to do is check your feed and you'll see the case before everyone else. You can subscribe to the vault by clicking on our show notes or go to the website, exorcistfiles.tv. That's exorcistfiles.tv. And with that short and sweet introduction, let's bring on the man to help us follow God's plan, Father Martins. Welcome back to the Exorcist Files, the show that is the spiritual gift that keeps on giving. And what a segue that was, because today we will be talking about spiritual gifts or charisms. Are they the same? I'm actually not entirely sure.

But of course, here to help us solve this ethereal mystery is the one and the only Father Carlos Martens, who is here to guide us today in this discussion. Father, Martins, thanks for joining us. Yeah, sure. Great to be here. Now, Father, you love talking about spiritual gifts, right? This is something that's come up repeatedly, and I appreciate how you've mentioned how important that the gifts have played in your own ministry and walk, and especially an

exorcism. Is this a personal passion of yours? Yeah. Like, I mean, I've had a lot of experience with teaching about them because I've had a lot of run-ins with gifts. And I'm fascinated by them. I'm fascinated by them as a work of the Holy Spirit, as an enduring presence of God that he has peppered his church with. And the gifts are unique to Christians, right? They are given at baptism. So others can be gifted in other ways. naturally gifted, let's say, but spiritually gifted, that is something unique and particular to Christians. So when you see that happening, you see the power of God erupting in his church. Well, you mentioned you've had a lot of experience. So maybe before we dive into a little bit of

the theology and kind of parse out charisms and gifts of the spirit versus fruits of the spirit, we're going to get into all that. But maybe you could start us off with a little anecdote. Yeah, so I was conducting an exposition of relics several years ago. And I was at a very small church in rural Michigan. And there was a gentleman there and his wife, he was helping me set up. They had volunteered to do so. And so it was the three of us setting up the display of relics. And he had mentioned that he knew a lot of the people that I knew from conferences.

And I said, what kind of conferences do you attend? and he mentioned healing conferences. And so I pressed in a little bit and he said, well, my wife and I, we have a little bit of a healing ministry. And I pressed in further. He was very humble. And what he meant was he has a gift of healing. And I said, tell me about that. What healings have you participated in it?

And he mentioned a bunch of things. And he reamed off numerous medical conditions that after he prayed, with people, they were gone. The last one he mentioned was the healing of legs, especially when one leg is of a different length than the other. And so that caught my ear and I said to him, you know, my left leg is one inch shorter than my right. And so I've had that my whole life. And so, you know, it wasn't a huge deal, but it is a deal because if you have a leg shorter than the other, then your hips are off balance, like you're tilted more to one side than the other. Your spine naturally turns itself the opposite way of the tilt so that you balance out,

so that one side of you is not carrying more weight than the other. I would have to visit a chiropractor. And so he said to me, well, here, sit down, let me pray for you. And so he put two chairs facing one another. He had me sit in one at a distance of a couple of feet. So kind of a distance far enough away from him that he had me extend my legs up in the air such that they were parallel with the floor. And he cupped the bottom of my heels.

He brought my feet together. He said, oh, yeah, sure enough. Yep, your right leg is longer than your left by about an inch. And so he said a prayer that was all of maybe 15 seconds long. And I felt the weirdest stretch in my leg and I saw my foot get further away from me. I felt my leg grow. And so I stood up and it was dramatically different that experience because they were now equal length. I went and I gave my talk that evening and I did something that I had never done before.

As I was giving that talk, so I'm in the church and I'm standing in the pulpit, I'm standing on both legs as I do so. Which before I would never do. I would always be leaning on one leg or the other and throughout a talk I would always be leaning on one leg or the other. and throughout a talk I would always alternate because there were different lengths so it wasn't comfortable to stand on both. But now I was doing that very thing. And so once that talk was done and everybody's

off in the room, now my relic ministry is a healing ministry. And so here's this gentleman with the gift of healing at my healing ministry and I've been healed. And in the course of people going around visiting relics and finding their saints and so forth, he's

watching. And he's watching for anybody with a kind of limp or with any kind of trouble walking. And he pulled two people aside and two separate times. And he asked them, do you have one leg longer than the other? It's not an uncommon condition. Lots of people have this. And these two people each said yes. And I saw him first with one and then maybe 15 minutes later when he found the with that person. I saw him pray over their legs. So I was standing over the people. I had a bird's eye view in both times. I remember the following day after this event, it was in the morning. I woke up and I was getting dressed and I was putting on my pair of pants. But I felt that there was a robustness now in my left hip than I never had before. Like it just felt there was

more structure, more bone there. Like the lifting up of my left leg to put in my pants was never a painful thing, but it was never as strong as the right side was. And now it was completely different. So this gentleman has a charism. God is working through him. His contribution is minimal. He offers prayer, and he picks the words that he's going to pray. But God is acting through him, using him as a conduit to display and demonstrate his power. Wow. So, Father, you could say you finally have a leg to stand on, right? I've got a leg to stand on. You bet. Yeah, I remember I, my doctor told me I have one leg shorter than the other, and that's why I have some hip issues. And as He said two hips, but sometimes no hooray.

That is a common condition. I can personally attest. Why do we dive in? Because you mentioned a couple wonderful things there, but maybe just to set the table, your position, which obviously is the Catholic Church position, right? And this is interesting because this is a little bit of a debate today. But just so we can equivocally say this, or unequivocally say this,

the gifts are alive and well. Is that the accurate statement, Father? Oh, absolutely. So look, charism is the way by which the Holy Spirit acts through us without us in order to build the church. So after his resurrection, Jesus said to his apostles, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

This is Acts chapter 1. So you will receive power. And the word there, the Greek word for power, is, Unimus, and it is the same root as the English word dynamite. So it means explosive, superabundant, dramatic power. This is the kind of power Jesus is promising. It is the power that is given to confirm the truth of the faith. Right.

So if our faith is true, if Christianity is true, and is different than everything else out there, than every other philosophy, every other religion, every other spirituality, If it's different from occult power, if it's different from everything that exists out there, then there's going to be signs to confirm its truth. And the charisms are one of those signs. Amen. Father Martin's here. I want to do a quick plug for one of the most powerful tools I've seen for breaking free and growing closer to Christ.

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This is your chance to break free, refocus, and rediscover who God is calling you to be in the new year. It starts January 20th. So go to Exodus 90.com slash X-Files to learn more about Exodus 90. that's exodus 90.com slash eX files to join tens of thousands of men from all over the world for Exodus 90. Again, it begins Monday, January 20th. God bless you. And Father, before we kind of dive into whom possesses these gifts and we'll get into this, but I'm generally curious, so in the non-denominational broader world,

and I'm actually, I'm not sure about the Orthodox, but there is an actual split over the continuation of the gifts, which they call cessationism, and this idea that the gifts died out with the apostles, and that while God is somehow present, he's not as active as maybe some of the charismatic churches might think he is, although I don't know if anyone would authentically truly say that God is not doing anything anymore,

but they tend to say these gifts died out once scripture was assembled. Has there ever been any debate like that within the Catholic Church, or has cessationism never actually been a thought because of the many testimonies of the saints and the tradition of these miracles being wrought throughout history? No, sensationism is a Protestant thing. It's not a Catholic thing. It's not an Orthodox thing. There are seasons in the church where the gifts were emphasized more than at other times. But the charisms have always been. been appreciated and gratefully received. I mean, you know, in the world of exorcism, for example, it's in Catherine of Siena. She had the charism of exorcism. She was the most effective exorcist of her day by virtue of a gift.

So it wasn't a learning that she had engaged in. It wasn't because she had the power of the priesthood. She wasn't a priest. But there was a charism, right? So the word charism just means gifted. And she possessed this. Well, everybody possesses charisms. So all Christians possess charisms, although they would possess them in different gifts, different charisms, and perhaps in varying degrees.

They are deposited within each Christian at his baptism. So when the Holy Spirit comes, like a perfect gentleman, he brings gifts. And so part of the joy, the pleasure, of the excitement of the Christian life is discovering what charisms God has invested within you because we all have them. And they are dramatic, all of them, every last one of them. You know, look at what the Lord's baptism did to him. Right. So this is from Matthew 3.

After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were open for him. and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heaven saying, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Right. So until that point, Christ had no divine power. He had surrendered that power at his incarnation. Now, he didn't surrender his divinity, his divine identity, right?

He always was God. It would be impossible for him to surrender that. but he surrendered the ability to possess the divine power and use it at will. This is why you don't hear about Jesus performing any miracles when he was an adolescent, for example. This is why you don't hear about him saving anyone, for example, St. Joseph, who was dead by the time that Jesus would presume he was dead because he's not mentioned in Scripture, by the time that Jesus began his ministry.

So Jesus couldn't have performed the miraculous, even if he wanted to. However, at his baptism, he receives his divine power again. And just keep reading the account what happens next. It says, then the devil drove him into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Drove him. Right? So God of the Father has empowered his son now. He has picked him up, dropped him in the devil's backyard.

God the father plops his son in the middle of the devil's backyard, rings the door, and says, here's my boy, take your best shot at him. So Jesus, having been empowered now by the father, the father has every confidence that he's going to be able to take on the devil. Jesus picks a fight with the devil, having been empowered by his father. And so our baptism is that moment when we receive that power, we receive that share in whatever configuration that God wants to give to us. But every single Christian receives them, receives multiple charisms. And part of the journey of the Christian life is discovering which ones those are. Now, Father, you mentioned it's the given to us at baptism, but do people show evidence of these

potential gifts? Or are we separating potentially natural talent? that are evident before being baptized, because obviously many people come to faith later, but would we see hints of a gift potentially in someone? Like we've talked about in some of our stories, what comes to mind is some of those preternatural sensitivities that are those connected potentially to, like, the ability to prophesy, for example,

or are those completely separate things? No, they're completely separate things. So a charism is a work of the Holy Spirit directly. the Holy Spirit is acting through you. A natural talent or a natural gift is a different thing. So a natural talent is present, at least in potency, from birth. Right. So your athletic ability, a musical ability, a natural intelligence.

They may require development, and most of them do. But they're present from birth. They advance the individual. A charism advances the kingdom. A natural talent can be used for evil. A charism can never be used for evil. So charism is not present from birth. It's bestowed at baptism.

And it advances and glorifies God by building up his kingdom. And so right away, there's something to note here. The charism is not for the glory. of the individual. So the gentleman who healed me, his name is John Kowalski, he didn't receive any benefit from that healing. And he doesn't. And in fact, John himself might, and I'm sure does suffer from illness once in a

well, he cannot heal himself. The charisms you possess do not benefit you directly because they're not given for you. They're given for the sake of the community. So God works to build up his kingdom through you. The benefit is not your own. It is a free gift to the community. And so how do you know that you have one? Well, there's two criteria and two criteria only.

When you act in your charism, it is a life-giving experience for you. You feel alive. You feel more like you than when you're not. operating within it. So there's a life-giving dimension to it. Somebody who has the gift of healing is in his element when he's operating within it. Someone who has the gift of teaching, the gift of prophecy, the gift of wisdom is in his or her element when he or she is operating in that charism, in that giftedness. You know, I've encountered many, many people. I mean, I've given seminars on spiritual giftedness on how to discover one's gift, how to develop them, and so forth.

And always in the crop of people that you have, you have certain people who want, for example, the gift of wisdom, the gift of teaching, the gift of understanding. Why? Because they're gifts that cause others to admire you. Like when you hear somebody who's really gifted with wisdom, you look at the effect on people and they're admiring that person. then you look at other gifts for example the gift of tongues many people come into learning about them discovering them at a seminar where the charisms are being discussed and they say flat out i don't want that one because it'll make me look foolish so these are both wrong attitudes to have if the lord is giving you a gift if he has given you a gift how dare you say no to it how dare you say no to the that he's given you. And look, God is relational. If someone gives you a gift, if your next-door

neighbor gives you a gift, and you don't accept it, you don't open it, is he likely to give you another one? And it's the same with God. Now, the charisms, they're already kind of packaged within you. But if you reject any one of them, any gift can be the key to unlocking the others. So a docility towards God is needed for effectiveness, period, regardless. Secondly, and this is the check and balance, because many of us can fool ourselves into thinking we have a charism because we want it. When a charism is present within an individual, the community acknowledges that it is. That's the check and balance.

So A, it's life-giving. but what separates fact from fiction at the end of the day is when you use the gift, the community, the church, the greater body, others around you say, when you do this, I sense God. When you do X, this happens and they list goodness. Now, you may want a certain gift and you just don't have it. Okay, that's fine. You can ask for the gift.

You can ask, Lord, can you release that within your gift? me, can you make the truth? There's nothing wrong with doing that. But at the end of the day, the decision is gods. So those two criteria, the fact that it's life-giving and the fact that others identify that that gift is present within you. Well, Father, I think we've kept the listeners in suspense. Everyone's wondering, geez, what are my gifts? And was that ability to make empignata as a gift or is that just a talent I have? Could you outline for us, Father, kind of maybe give us a concise distillation. What are the gifts?

And I know we mentioned a couple of things that there's gifts identified in the book of Isaiah. There's later things that are the fruits of the spirit. So maybe start us off and give us kind of the lay of the land here. What are these things that are available to us that we've seen throughout history? Okay. All right. So we're talking about three different things there. So there are the Isaiahan gifts.

So first of all, the word charism simply means gift. It means that in Greek. So the Isaiahan gifts literally mean the Isaiahan carisms. The Isaiahan gifts are very different than the charismatic gifts, than the gifts that Paul mentions in 1st Corinthians 12. So let's take these in order. So Isaiah 11 mentions seven gifts, wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God.

these are all gifts that are given to build up the individual. They are traits that Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone possesses in their plenitude. But as members of his body, we share in them. And so they are deposited within us to make us holy. So by virtue of your baptism, you have them, I have them, as long as we're in the state of grace, we possess them, the purpose of their presence is to make you holy. Boom. Next, there's the fruits of the Spirit, which Paul mentions in Galatians 5.

So he says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So what are those? Those are the effects of the Holy Spirit that others will perceive. So when you are holy, when you're acting the way that you should, when you are a proper disciple of Jesus Christ, you will begin to exhibit these and the holier you become, the more of these you will exhibit. So all of these, both of these two sets, are different than the gifts that we're talking about right now than the topic of this podcast. Right? So we're talking about charisms.

So the Corinthian gifts, not the Isaiahan gifts and not the fruits of the Spirit. So in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul mentions a number of gifts. So let's put all this into context, okay? The letter to the church at Corinth, Paul wrote, the Christian community at Corinth was the largest of the Christian communities. So they discovered a number of things. They discovered the charisms. They discovered this ability where the Holy Spirit works through them. and they discover they hang on a second.

We can be in the state of sin. We can be sleeping around with someone else's wife. We can be having committed an act of theft, for example, and still be able to operate in a charism. And so they just decided, you know what? The Holy Spirit has released something new within us. We can dispense with the church and with the normal rules. and we're just going to operate within our charisms because, hey, we can still speak in tongues

when we're in the state of sin. That means sin is not a problem. So Paul rails against that, and he spells out then a theology of the gifts. So he identifies in 1st Corinthians 12 tongues. So a language of the spirit. Prophecy, the ability to proclaim a message from God, So someone with the gift of prophecy will feel prompted to speak something, and it has a dramatic effect. People hear God within that. It's a message from God. It's not deduced. It's not figured out.

It's a packaged message that comes from heaven. The gift of wisdom, the ability to make God-like decisions and judgments and to understand his plans. someone with wisdom looks at a situation, looks at situations, and just can hit the nail on the head of what is common among all of them. It has this superabundant clarity as to how this situation sits in the eyes of God. The gift of knowledge, the ability to have an in-depth knowledge of God's ways, discernment of spirits, the ability to discernment the source of something, either from God or from the enemy. So someone with the discernment of spirits can encounter someone or a place, a situation,

and all of a sudden, no, evil is operative here. It's not just looking at a house and sensing the hebi-jibis, but just knowing evil is operative here. And so I need to pray. I need to respond to this. I need to put all of my radar up and screwing. scrutinize what's happening right now because the enemy is at work. The ability of miracles.

So the ability to work above the laws of nature. And that's distinct from healing, which is another charism. So the ability to heal is to bring about wholeness and integration of people. It's to cure from an affliction, an ailment. But miracles is something different. So someone with the gift of miracles by being present, by praying in a situation, the laws of nature can be superseded. preceded. The gift of faith, right? The gift of deep confidence and trust in God. And finally,

the gift of interpretation of tongues, the ability to interpret a prophetic message spoken in the language of the spirit. So the gift of tongues, there's multiple forms of the gift of tongues. Some of them, it is simply a prayer, a language of the spirit. There's no interpretation for it, even when there's people around who have the gift of interpretation, because it's not meant to be interpreted. It's simply a praying in the language of the spirit. In contrast, at times there are tongues that has a prophetic message, and someone with the gift of interpretation, someone who is given that gift, can interpret it. So Paul gives this list, you know, so I think I've read about 11 or 12 of them there. but this does not exhaust the list.

So Paul never meant for this to be an exhaustive list of the cherisms. These are some of the more common ones. But for example, there's the gift of hospitality, the ability to make someone a guest, a visitor, to feel profoundly welcome and special within your home. And it's not just the fact that they feel comfortable that they feel good, that you serve them good food, good booze, and they feel good about that. It's something that goes into the deepest core of their spirit.

One of my best friends and his wife have this gift. And I brought friends over to their house. We stopped in before we engaged on a long five-hour drive. On that drive for most of that journey, that individual that I brought over to that couple's house, it's all he could talk about was just how special they were how much he appreciated that visit well there's the chasm of hospitality

at play so when you're in their presence the Holy Spirit is there and the hospitality is coming from him so there's a generosity from them but it's more than just generosity there's a goodness

a kindness there's conversation there's love but it's all beyond what you typically encounter from people with hospitality, love, conversation, and so forth. It just resonates and it goes deeply within a person. So the gifts are not limited to what Paul lists, and he affirms them. In 1st Corinthians 12, he affirms the heck on them.

And then later on, in 1 Corinthians 14, he says, desire the gifts and don't despise them. desire them that you should be wanting to operate within them you should want to discover them but nowhere does he say hey look these are the gifts and this exhaust them and furthermore he does give a hierarchy among them right some gifts are better than others right wisdom knowledge teaching is better than simply the gift of tongues although he's not despising tongues by any means i use the gift of tongues within exorcism and the demon absolutely hates it. Absolutely hates it. I found it a very effective tool. Father, can I ask about tongues real quick? Because obviously this is an interesting discussion among many different charismatic bents. You know, one is that there is the tongues that require an interpretation. There's

private tongues. When Paul says, I'd rather, you know, speak one word of prophecy than 10,000 words in a tongue, what is the Catholic Church's position on tongues for believers? Because I know some different traditions will say, oh, it's not tongues because you need an interpreter. And I've always read that passage and saying, if tongues were just a normal earthly language being babbled, you wouldn't need interpreters. Could you walk us through a little bit of that? Right. So the vast majority of tongues when you hear it, it's not prophetic tongues. In other words, it's not prophesying something.

It's not given a message that the community needs to be. to follow or that you need to follow. And furthermore, there would need to be an interpretation of that. So if there's no interpretation, if someone doesn't have the answer key to it, well, the gift is ineffective in and of itself. So that gift does exist, in my experience, it's very rare. I have heard it. I've been present when it was there. And in fact, on one occasion, I remember receiving the interpretation of the tongue. I spoke it out. I still remember what it was. So, I mean, in a human sense, what the person uttered was gibberish. And I heard very clearly, I scatter to gather. I scatter to gather. And so I spoke that out to the group. This was in

the context of a prayer group with a prayer group of multiple priests. There were over 30 priests there. And it evidently had an effect because the body resonated within that word for a great length. of time. And people began sharing how that spoke to them in a certain way. But the vast majority of tongues are praise tongues. You are glorifying God and speaking that out. Now, I remember I got the gift of tongues before I started studying theology and before I started studying Hebrew and things like that. And when I began studying Hebrew, I noticed that there were words that. that I would often say in tongues, like Hashem, I discovered that actually it's a Hebrew word. It means the name.

So when Jews would encounter the word God in the Old Testament, right, which in English we typically say Yahweh, they would never pronounce it for fear of blaspheming. They would replace the word God, the name of God, with the name. And they would say, the name said to Moses, the name said this, the name then did this. Well, I was saying Hashem. At other times, I would say, Adunai, the Lord. At other times, Baruch Hashem, Lord Most High. But it was not Hebrew that I was speaking overall, because there were words within it that had no Hebrew meaning.

They just were not Hebraic words. They were words of some other language. that language may be a human language. It may be a language that does exist somewhere in the world or may have existed at some point in time. I don't know, I couldn't tell you. But I do know that I'm praying. I do know that I'm connected with the spirit.

I do know that it's accomplishing something. I had two friends. They were in New York. They were at a church in Manhattan. And at the end of Mass, they stayed behind in a pew. and they started praying in tongues. And they were doing so not loudly, but evidently they were loud enough

that a woman, a couple of pews ahead of them, heard them, and she came back. And she said, she asked them, where did you learn Russian? She heard exactly what they were saying and they had no idea what they were saying. Now again, I want to emphasize that the gift of tongues might be,

at times, an identifiable language, but it might not be. It may not be that at all. And I know that at times, when I'm praying within it, it will change. Like there will be one language at a certain point, and then I just sense within me a change, and I begin praying a different way. And the two languages are just absolutely unrelated. They sound very different, one from the other. Wow. Yeah. I've heard several stories of that in interviewing people for my other. show on miracles. We've had, you know, I would say common, but it's a familiar story when you hear missionaries talk about how they were praying in tongues and many times in the native village where

they have no idea of the languages. Some will approach them and say, how did you know my native language and my mother's name? And I've heard enough now to say that's something that seems to be happening with occurrence, especially in ministry overseas and in kind of remote areas. Sure. You know, Pope John Paul II, he really wants. wanted the gift of tongues. And so I remember there was a meeting, a prayer gathering by father, presided over by father, now cardinal, Reniero canta la Mesa, who's a Capuchin priest in Rome, and he has the distinction of being the papal preacher. So the Pope goes on retreat once a year, and when he does so, the papal preacher is his retreat master. And so Father Reniero,

said that John Paul II would constantly ask him, pray that I get the gift of tongues, pray that I get the gift of tongues. And then one day the pope was receiving a head of state. That when the pope does that, there's a very formal procedure, right? So you meet in the apostolic library. So there's a meeting with a kind of a photo op with lots of dignitaries, photographers, etc. Then when that's done, everybody exits, they go to a different room and the actual meeting occurs. then when it's done they go to this exit room and there's another photo op with photographers reporters and so forth and so father can to la mesa was part of that initial group that was in the apostolic

library for that initial meeting and then of course okay now that's done everybody who's not needed at the meeting leaves and the meeting ensues so father can'telamesa begins walking down the corridors of the vatican to exit and all of a sudden he hears behind him the doors just fling open and there's just a clacking of shoes on the marble, clack, clack, clack, clag, clag, and then I'm calling out, Ranero, Renero, I got the gift of tongues, I got the gift of tongues. So at a random time, as he's receiving this head of state, as he's getting down to sit with him and meet with him, the gift of tongues erupts out of his mouth. Right. And so he had it from that moment forward. So that comes firsthand, right,

from Father Kent to Lamesa, who was there at the time. All right, so, Father, for those wondering, and I know you've accused me often of just babbling on, which I thought was tongues, but you've said it may just be bad grammar. But what is, that's right, Father's often said that without an interpreter, who is one to read Ryan's writing? Father, how would you know if you're playing at tongues or if you actually have the gift of tongues, especially like in your own private prayer time or ministry? Is there a way to discern that? You know, certainly that's an art. And for many, including myself, it was a challenge. So, you know, after my conversion from atheism, I encountered different prayer groups. Some were rosary groups. Others were, you know, they'd gather for Eucharistic adoration within a church. And I attended this charismatic prayer group. And I found the people there really spirit-filled, really anointed, gentle, kind, and just were very serious about prayer. And then they did this odd thing. praying in tongues.

Like what sounded gibberish, but it wasn't totally gibberish. There was a rhythm to it. It was clearly a language. And they gave teachings on it. And they said what I have said, that it's a language of the spirit. They pointed out its biblical place and so forth. And as time went on, I found myself really desiring to have the gift of tongues, like to speak in this language of the spirit.

And so I prayed for it, prayed for it, prayed for it, prayed for it, prayed for it, pray for it, pray for it. Years went by, years went by, years went by. And, you know, just nothing happened. And I thought, if you're going to have it, it's just going to erupt. And for many people, that's how it does. They just erupt. Their mouth kind of begins moving. There's a kind of, maybe an itch, if you will, to speak. And they just, all of a sudden, it just rolls out. That was John Paul II's experience. Well, it was not my experience. I attended a gathering of priests, and I was sitting behind this one priest who had just a beautiful sounding gift of tongues. And many of them did, but his was especially just gave such a pleasure to listen to it.

And then afterwards, I said to him, you know, can you pray that I get the gift of tongues? And he looked at me, you don't have the gift of tongues. I mean, as if it would be an obvious thing that I should. I said, well, no. And he put his hands on me and he started. to pray and after 10, 15 seconds, he says, you have the gift of tongues. I said, no, I don't. He says, yes, you do. I said, I don't. He says, try it. Like, try it. Like, what? What are you talking about? And so he prayed again. And he just said, he absolutely convinced, you have the gift of tongues.

I said, I don't have it. He said, look, just start moving your mouth. start making a syllable. And so, uh, you know, I, I just, uh, and that was it. There was nothing more to it. And it was obviously created by me. I mean, there was no holy spirit within it. I was generating the sound. I didn't know what else to do.

And frankly, I felt silly. He said, you have the gift of tongues. Go into your room and practice. practice. Well, if I'm going to have the gift, I'm going to have the gift. I shouldn't have to practice it as if it were some kind of human creation that I had to perfect. But you know what? It was the best advice he gave me.

Because I did exactly that. I went into my room and I began with a sound. Like I followed everything that he said. I just followed. And then all of a sudden, Kiri Aramara Shoh and that are

a cari Haar Koriahara la la mara sho and it just rolled and there was a pleasure

in just letting it happen I don't have to think about making the sound it's just there I discover it as the sound is made

so what am I saying I have no idea but I know I'm praying and I remember remember the first time I used it at an exorcism where I was helping Monsignor Brankin, I don't think that he had ever encountered tongues before. And when I got there, he had asked me to help him out and on this particular case, and I was glad to. And he thought what I would do is take the book and pray along, or maybe that I would sit and do some other kind of praying

within the room, like sitting on the far corner. I didn't. I stood. I stood. right next to him behind the victim and just in one ear, Kiyeramari Shou, and in that session, the demon was constantly telling me to shut up, making belligerent comments, mimicking what I was doing, but with a kind of demonic tongues. In other words, the prayers that Monsignor was reading from the ritual,

the demon paid no regard to them. And so there was just in that particular demon a profound bother with the praying in tongues that was happening. Such that afterwards, I remember Marisina coming to me and saying, like, can you please teach me how to do that? So the spirit was operative in a profound way. And in a sense, it shouldn't surprise us because notice the gift which immediately accompanied the Holy Spirit at Penteenth. to cost was tongues, and that everyone who received the Spirit also received the gift of tongues. This is in Acts chapter 2. So there is one priest, a very holy priest, God rest his soul, he's now past, Father Robert de Grandes,

who wrote a lot on the charismatic gifts and who was very gifted himself and knew and could powerfully operate in the Holy Spirit. you know, he said that the gift of tongues is present within every baptized person. That was his belief that every single person has the gift of tongues. We usually need to do something to yield to it, such as repeating a couple of syllables, and then it becomes operative. It's so simple that it seems foolish. But we shouldn't be afraid of seeming foolish.

Paul exhorts us in 1st Corinthians chapter 1. God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise. And so as we yield to the gift of tongues or to any gift, we are learning to communicate with God. And it's prayer, tongues is prayer in non-vernacular, so in other words, non-English speech, that comes from the Holy Spirit and it always remains under your control. You can start and stop it whenever you want. But when you engage it, you're engaging the Holy Spirit. You can use it alone or in a group. You can use it to pray for yourself, to pray for others, simply to praise God.

You know, there are times where I just want to thank God and I've used everything I can in the languages I know, like say in English, to give them gratitude for something, but you still feel like there's more. and I'll switch into tongues. And although I don't know what I'm saying, per se, I don't need to know. What I do know is God is being praised. The Holy Spirit is helping me do it. And that's exactly what I want.

Father, I want to ask you again about prophecy, because this is something that's personally I'm really close to and have a lot of community members that have really different opinions on this. And so could you walk us through a little bit of the Catholic perspective on Old Testament prophecy and then the New Testament prophecy that Paul talks, about when he tells believers, I think the Greek word is to actually lust after prophecy in 1st Corinthians 12 or 14 it is, because it seems like a lot of folks debate, what is prophecy? Is it for telling a future event? Is it that thing that a lot of us encounter where it's like,

oh, I have this image of a yellow house in my head. Does that mean anything to you? And suddenly the person goes, oh my gosh, it seems in the church with Paul, he talks about the type of prophecy that reveals the secrets of someone's heart and they give praise to God that, wow, how could you have known that? So is there any guidance you could give us on kind of this gift of prophecy and are there, quote, prophets today, that kind of thing? Right. So it means all of the above. It means all of those things. And then some. Prophecy, put simply, means knowing the mind of God. And God can do that through an image. He can do it through a word. He can do it through a sentence, a phrase, or a paragraph. He can do it by revealing a passage that when that passage is read out loud, oh my gosh,

there's the missing puzzle piece. There's something there that just the whole community was waiting for and the nail was hit there, so to speak. And so you might read a verse from the Bible and just something just jumps out at you. It speaks to you. But if it's a Corinthian gift, if it's a charismatic gift, it'll speak not just to you. It speaks to the community, right? So the Corinthian gifts are not given for you. They're given through you to the community. And so for that reason, they cannot be misused.

So if it's of God, then you don't deserve any merit. You know, the fact that you are a great prophet, the fact that you have the gift of miracles is the gift of healing. That doesn't speak one bit to your personal holiness. And this is the problem that we have with Corinth, right? So these people at Corinth, a great many of them, if not all of them, were in mortal sin. They were outright living in a state of sin. There was fornication going on.

There was adultery going on. There was incest going on in one member of the community. And yet all of these gathered at church and they were operating in the gifts. So people wonder like, heavens, how can that be? How can God permit that? because the gifts are not given for the individuals themselves. They're given for the community. They're given for others.

So someone can be in an absolutely broken state and still give those gifts. That's right. Jesus says something like that, doesn't he, Father? Many will come to me in those days and say, did I not do great works in your name? Did I not heal the sick, cast out demons? And he'll say, peace out, yo. I didn't know you.

I'll flesh this out with an example. So there was an individual that I knew who had a profound gift of healing. And this individual was a seminarian at the time. I mean, when I say a profound gift of healing, I was healed by him. So I had a spinal problem. And I asked him to pray over me, and he did. And I was healed that very night. Like, I was healed then and there.

Like, I had to go to a chiropractor. So it wasn't fatal. it wasn't, you know, I wasn't crippled. But it was greatly, it was very painful and certainly very inconvenient and very taxing, expensive on me, because I'd have to go visit a chiropractor so often. Well, he prayed over me and it was done. And I know he prayed over many people and they were healed. Yet morally speaking, he was highly problematic. I didn't know this. He ended up being thrown out of that seminary. He was thrown out of the next seminary and he was thrown out of another seminary after that. So wherever there was trouble, he was no further than one inch

from the center of the trouble. Lots and lots of problems. Yet, he had the gift of healing. So how does that work? Well, the gift of healing was not given for him, but for the community, but for the church, the building up of the church. So that remains operative, no matter if he's in a wretched state. And he was in a wretched state. So I found out years later that he was still trying to frankly weasel his way into the priesthood. And I communicated to the Vatican. And I put a dossier together and communicated. He went and asked huge sums of money for the healing. He would make up a story that he needed money because his brother was in an accident and there was these medical bills that needed paying and so forth.

So, you know, I remember from one group, he pulled $17,000 off of them to pay. So that's a lot more money in today's dollars. And it was all bogus. It was a straight outright lie. There was no ill brother. There was no injury that his brother had that he needed to pay for. So years later, when I found out that he was still in seminary, you know, it was now, gosh, 15 years later, I wrote the Vatican and I put a dossier together of different

witnesses and people. And his ordination to the priesthood was stop two weeks before it was to take place. And that's how it is unto now. And that was about 10 years ago. It'll be 10 years this year. And once his record, once his background was exposed, then he's yet another person who is operating in the prophetic, but who is in a wretched moral state. So someone who, who is, is gifted, it is not by their own ability that they are. So they don't deserve any merit for it. I mean, it's good and wonderful that they operate in their gifts because the community benefits for it. But it doesn't mean that they have a single ounce of holiness within them. So you need to remember that to put it all in perspective. When you hear somebody preaching,

a preacher who is just really gifted in that area, it doesn't mean that that they're not that they that preacher has one ounce of holiness. And so, Father, when Paul says we see dimly, you know, you hear a lot in prophetic circles, hey, I test this word. If I give it to you, there is some language, you know, to run it by people. So would you say New Testament prophecy is fallible and we're trying the best we can to discern what God is saying and we'll just, we'll get it wrong sometimes? Yeah, exactly, exactly, right? The Holy Spirit was doing that work, but the individual was a conduit, simply a conduit for it. Now, you mentioned prophecy in the Old Testament. Look, the main difference between the prophetic in the Old Testament and the New is the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit

came at Pentecost. And so he's not just hovering around us. He's actually inside us. And so what takes place now that was not evident in the Old Testament is a clarity. So in the Word of God in the Old Testament, it is the Word of God. When a prophet gets a message, he gets a message. But when you look at those messages, they're often dim and dark. They're not a message like Jesus Christ gives, which has a profound clarity. They're not a message like St. Paul gives. He's profoundly more clear than, say, even Isaiah in the Old Testament. So the clarity now has come because Christ, Christ has bestowed the gift of the Holy Spirit from his father upon Christians. So it's fallible.

You know, the gifts are operative. It's not to say that every time you speak what you think is a prophetic word is a prophetic word. It's not to say that it's always going to be interpreted properly, the way that God intends it. And it's not to say that you won't add something that you think is part of the word, but it's not. You added it. So that's why we test. But when the Holy Spirit is operative, my gosh, it's a beautiful thing. It's wonderful.

The Holy Spirit brings the dunamis, brings the power. And I'd take divine power any day over human power. I take divine power over human thinking any day. I take divine power over anything. When you're accomplishing a work, you know, if the Holy Spirit is willing to be your partner in this, how can you say no? Amen. All right, fathers, we land our spiritual gifts discussion here, and obviously we'll have to have more conversations because there's just so much that can be discussed. I really appreciate your point about the gifts not being synonymous with character.

We see Saul was pretty anointed in the eyes of people, and he had some internal problems. And, of course, our boy, Samson had some dalliances and had some character flaws, and he seemed to have some extra gifts as far as strengths and stuff. I think it's a good reminder for us all. Father, I know naturally some of us are wondering, well, I have some gifts, right? No one has no gifts, right? And so if I'm baptized Christian, how would I know what my gifts are? Is there a test I can take or not to be facetious?

Besides praying and practicing, how would I know what my gifts are? Right. So let's go back to the two criteria that I said identify a gift, right? A gift is life-giving. When you're operating within it, you feel more of yourself. then when you're not, you feel like you're doing that for which you were made to do. The other criteria is the community, the body, the church comes to you and gives you that feedback. Man, you are gifted in this area.

When you do this, I sense God, I experience God, or I sense something really special. So you need to get to where that number two is possible. you need to expose yourself in doing things, in doing activities in order to provoke that. And for that matter, it also exposes you to number one. So I remember when I was stationed at a church and I was teaching on the gifts. And there was one gentleman always came up, he'd come up kind of at the most awkward times. Father, can you help me discern what my gifts are? So he'd come in my office and plop himself down as if I've got to,

25 minutes to spare, can you do it so that I'm not late for dinner? Well, I have never seen you engaged in ministry, ever. When we make invitations, you never volunteer. You are never engaged in it. So I can't tell you what your gifts are because I've never seen you operative, trying to do anything. So I tell him this, two weeks go by, He comes back in my office and tells me,

Father, can you tell me what my gifts are? And so I just repeated the same thing. I said, look, we have 68 ministries here at the church. You volunteer in none of them. How can I tell you what your gifts are if I don't see you in action? The Holy Spirit will bear witness to how he's acting through you when you act, when you do that acting.

And so I remember a third. time he did the same thing. So in his mind, there would be a self-evidentness about it. You'd look at his forehead and be able to ream off his two, three, or 18 gifts, whatever it was. It just was not in the realm of reality. And so I said to him, here's a list of the ministries, pick two of them that you like, and start volunteering your time. I think he did pick two of them, but he never participated. So, you know, it's tragic. It's a waste because most Christians go through their lives not knowing what their charisms are. And if they don't know, they don't employ them sufficiently. Sometimes they get employed without us even be aware of them. But when you know

that you have them, you can move to act with them and God accomplishes amazing things. Right. Think of, if you have the gift of healing, you could take away somebody's cancer. Like, say if you could go your life, you could have helped, you know, a mother not die of cancer so that she's around to raise her four children. You know, a son miraculously recover from an accident, a car accident. And so he has his whole life to live ahead of him because you happen to be there to pray for him and you engaged in it. Like you see this accident. You stand as close as you can to the scene and you say, Lord, I employ everything I have here, everything that you've given me. I ask now that you bring about a healing if it be your will.

And then they talk subsequently about how against all odds, right, and they use the word miracle left and right, that this kid who should be dead has survived. You know, how could that not be something that we all strive for? So it is to your benefit to learn what your gifts are. But to do that, you've got to engage in things. You've got to put yourself in a position where you can be prophetic. It often helps when you're around other people who,

are prophetic and they can apprentice you just through observation, through vicarious watching, learning. You can engage in it. So the model of apprenticing can be very useful in this. So a prayer group, a charismatic prayer group where they operate in the gifts is wonderful. That's how I learned. And I'll tell you this, the more you operate in your gifts, the more of the Lord just says, gosh, you know, everything I've given you, you've worked hard at it, you've pushed at it, you know what, I'm going to take another talent or two, and I'm going to wash you with that. Boom. And so all of a sudden you can discover, gosh, years into a particular ministry, something else now begins to take over.

Nacently, it was present at you at your baptism. But you know what? God just shakes the tree and just makes it come alive. So here's something else. And maybe it's the fact, maybe, to use something straight out of the, Bible, an analogy that the Lord uses, you know, he may take a gift not being used by someone else and just take it from him and just give it to you. I'm going to invest the talent that that guy has and has squandered, and I'm going to give it to you. All right, so, Father, I know a burning

question from a lot of listeners asking for a friend, but my dad jokes and sins of humor, that is not explicitly outlined in scripture, right? Or is there actually a framework for where it's extra biblical. So look, humor absolutely can be a charismatic gift. Any activity can be. And so what does it produce? If and when you engage in it, people get closer to God through it. And they communicate that. There's evidence that that's happening through the communication. So I'll give you just a really neat example. Years ago, in my ministry, so I was chaplain of a campus ministry. We had a safe there, like a metal safe, that was not huge.

Like it was maybe 18 inches square, but heavier than heck. It was like 300 pounds. And the combination had been forgotten. So whoever had it, lost it, and then the chaplain's, The pastors changed. And so anyone who knew what the combination was was long gone. So I reached out and I asked every one of them. None of them could remember it.

And so this thing is just sitting there taking up space. Right. So I can't get inside it. I don't know if there's anything inside it. And so after a while, after a couple of years, I just finally thought, you know what, what am I going to do about this? And so I looked up safe cracking on the Internet. So I was looking for a safe cracker.

Is there such a person? Can such a person be found? Well, I stumbled on a site that talked about the world champion safecracker. And guess what? He was in the same city that I was. And he had a business whereby that's what he did. So I called him up. And so he came over the next day.

And so I pulled out this safe with the help of two other guys. It was just crazy heavy. We put it on top of one chair and it broke it. We then stacked a couple chairs together, put it on top of those and thankfully they held. And so he came in and he does it through finesse. So there's nothing violent he does to the safe. I mean, there is a way if turning the dial and discovering the combination doesn't work. There's a way in which you can drill into the safe and put in a probe so that you can

see the back of the dial and then seeing those numbers, you can have an easier time at discovering them. But all he did was he sat there and he started turning the wheel. And he worked from in reverse. So he discovered the final number, the third number, then the second, and then finally the first. And all the while he's having a conversation with me as he's doing this. So he's doing this strictly on feel. So he's turning the wheel, turning, turning, turning, and we're just talking about how he got into this. And I asked him, how did you get into this? And he said, you know what? Honestly, it was God. God led me to this. And so I just found myself initially in a situation where I went into a restaurant. There was a safe that hadn't been open in a long time, big, fancy

safe. It was in the middle of the restaurant. And I asked, the waitress was in the safe. And she said, we don't know. It hasn't been open forever. And he says, gosh, if I can open it, can I eat for free? You know, he was a young kid, maybe 14 at the time. She said, sure. And so, in no time he opens it. Now, was there a charismatic gift in that? Possibly, possibly. But regardless of whether he has a gift of safecracking, a charismatic gift, he for sure has a knack, he for sure has a natural ability. But does he have the Holy Spirit power to do it? One thing, thing he did understand and intuitive is this in it by doing this he is fulfilling the will of the holy spirit people have this need and this need is a real need and for some people it's a

desperate need and he's fulfilling it this man was so spirit-filled and he's so impressed me that years later i still think about that i still in my mind go back to that and there's no question in my mind that the Holy Spirit was operating through him. And he spoke with such a gentleness, such a forthrightness. It was so obvious that God was using him and that he was docile to God. And so is safe cracking a charismatic gift? I'm tempted to say yes. It for sure wasn't him. It was a ministry to him. It wasn't just a job. He could be doing other things. My gosh, if he was a criminal, he could make a killing. But he employs it to help people.

In this moment, he was engaged in me fully. And just, you know, he was sharing about what God was doing in his life, what he has seen God doing. And then all of a sudden he just said, okay, father, here you go. And he opens up the door and he turns his head away so that he wouldn't see what was inside the safe. He was consummately respectful.

Like, you brought me here to open the safe. you did not bring me here to look inside the safe. And guess what? The safe had nothing inside it. It had a few rubber bands. It had an empty money bag. And it had a spare key to the tabernacle, which was useful because we only had one key. It's useful to have a spare in case the main one is lost.

Wow. Perhaps that is prophetic because isn't God trying to crack the code on all our hearts, father instead of just invading. He wants to be let in. Isn't there a truth? Their truth there? This is reassuring listeners, too, because our Exorcist Files account is shared, as we know, on Father's YouTube.

So his viewing history shows up, and I must say I was, I am relieved to see the history of safe cracking videos to finally be put into context. So I was worried that Father was planning a heist, and we just weren't aware of it. So don't worry, friends. We fund the show through Kickstarter, not through Safecracking. right father that's right absolutely okay awesome well folks we gotta land the prophetic plane here but thank you so much for listening go out practice your spiritual gifts there is a great proverb it says show me a person skilled in their craft or gifts and i will show you someone who will be set before

kings so make room for the gift right father you bet absolutely all right folks thanks so much god bless you all and tune in a couple weeks cases are coming we'll talk soon You're a lot of